Tag: destiny

144. Stepping Stones To Change

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

While we are building up our spirit by opening that first love gate inside us, praying continually, and waiting on the Lord, we also need to allow God to work on our soul so that it comes into proper submission to our spirit.

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I (Christ in me) now live in the flesh, I (Christ in me) live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me (Gal 2:20).

The whole relationship changes when I recognise that I have been crucified, and when I die to self, because God is then able to join Himself to me in manifesting Himself to the world around me.

Search me, try me

Search me thoroughly, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.
(Ps 139:23-24).

When we pray a prayer like that, God takes us at our word: He takes us up on what we have prayed. If we are willing to pray that prayer, He will search our heart. And He will also enable us to know what is going on in our heart. This is part of the process of change: we have to be prepared to allow God to search our hearts and show us what is there. We have to be willing to look at ourselves and see what is going on on the inside.

For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. (1 Cor 11:31 NKJV)

In judging ourselves, though, we do not compare ourselves to anyone but Jesus. God wants us to be transformed into the image of Jesus, and if we compare ourselves to Him we can see how far we have come, and how much more God still has to do in our hearts.

“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road. The one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away. And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil… (Matt 13:18-23)

The word of the kingdom gets sown into our heart. There are four kinds of soil mentioned here. Because of the past there may be areas in our hearts which are trampled down, compacted and hard, like a path, and the seed cannot grow there. Or it may be the rocks and stones in our heart, the things that have happened to us, that make it hard for the word to take root. We may get distracted by allowing our flesh to direct our thinking and our behaviour. Our hearts need to be changed, transformed into good soil, so that the word of the kingdom of God can grow in us and flourish, and bear fruit.

Consider it joy

But there is a process we need to go through in order to deal with the things that are in our hearts.

…strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, – this sounds really good so far – and saying, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” (Acts 14:22).

How is that ‘encouraging’? Because when we are in the middle of the troubles, trials, or tribulations, we need to know that it is all part of the process of God bringing transformation. I am not talking about sickness or things like that (God does not bring any sickness on us) but about situations and circumstances in our lives that highlight for us the condition of our heart in a particular area.

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (James 1:2-4).

How many of us actually consider our trials as joy? But it is the attitude we have to the trials that will determine their outcome. And if we consider that God uses trials to transform us, then we will have a different approach to the situations we face. We can allow those trials to be stepping stones to change, transformation and growth; or we can resist those trials and then nothing in us will change. We have to welcome them with thanksgiving and joy. We can thank God for the trials He brings, because we know that we are being perfected, becoming complete, and will lack in nothing – just like Jesus.

If that is the outcome we are looking for, then we have to be willing to look within our lives so that we can learn, overcome, grow; so that we can see what is on the inside transformed.

Exult in tribulations

And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us (Rom 5:3-5).

Exulting in tribulations is exactly the opposite of what our flesh wants to do. Gifts are given, but fruit grows. We want to grow in the fruit of the Spirit, and be more like Jesus. It is great to receive things as a gift; but we do not get character that way: it is a fruit of dealing with the trials and troubles in our lives. How we deal with them is what shapes our character and causes us to act like Jesus.

And everything operates through love. The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, and it enables us to deal with every situation, every trial, every trouble that we face. The love of God is in us.

It is not that He is disciplining us because He does not love us. Quite the opposite: He disciplines us because He does love us, He cares for us, and He wants us to be transformed and changed. Then He can reveal us on the earth as the manifest sons of God, shining with His light, displaying His character and the fruit that comes from a life transformed by the situations that we have faced.

He Won’t Relent

The process itself may not sound too pleasant. But it will be less painful if we surrender to the process rather than struggling against it. Jesus said:

And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder (Matt 21:44 NKJV).

Our soul can be broken, and then restored; or it can be crushed. Which would you rather? As I allow brokenness in my soul, the fragrance of God’s presence comes from me. The other way fragrance can be released from something is by grinding it to powder. God wants us to be changed. He won’t relent (as we have been singing again recently) until He has it all, all of us.

God loves us too much to let us go. Time and time again He will give us opportunities to grow and be transformed. We can give Him our heart, and surrender to the process, and be filled with joy, peace and love; or we can fight, struggle, and resist what He is wanting to do. Then all that happens is that we get to go around the mountain one more time, until He gives us another opportunity to deal with the same issue. I am sure there have been times when most of us have been around the same mountain more than once, until we learnt this truth.

He wants us to look at the mountain and say, ‘This is not going to stop me. I am going to deal with this and overcome it. I am going to climb this mountain’.

When we do, that mountain is going to elevate us higher into the purposes of God for our lives.

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143. Beholding And Becoming

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

As Christians, we know that God lives on the inside of us (1 John 4:15). It is when we open up the gateway of first love, and allow Him to have first place in our lives, that He will begin to transform us from the inside out. Our spirit can take its proper place of authority over both our souls and our bodies.

Praying in tongues all the time allows our spirit to be in constant connection and communion with God, and to experience a flow of revelation from heaven.

The third thing which will help us to build a strong spirit is waiting on the Lord, and being still.

Be still

As I mentioned before, I went through a period in my times with God in which I could not see anything, and nothing seemed to be happening. I found it really hard. I did not think that I would, but I did. God effectively put me in a place where I needed to trust Him. I thought I did trust Him, but I found that in fact I needed to know what was going on. So I had to surrender that to Him, allow myself to rest in a place where I did nothing but wait in His presence. When I did that, after a few weeks he began to reveal Himself and show me things again.

But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint
(Isaiah 40:31).

He becomes our source. We draw from Him all that we need in our lives to fulfil our destiny in Him.

Be still, and know that I am God 
(Psalm 46:10).

He wants us to know – not in our head, but by personal encounter with His presence. That is what the hebrew sense of the word ‘know’ is: it means ‘to encounter intimately’. We have to stop trying to do things in our own strength, even trying to change ourselves, and instead surrender to Him. If we read that same scripture in the Amplified Bible it says:

Cease striving,
Let be and be still and know that I am God
(Psalm 46:10 AMP).

He will give us everything we need and empower us to do all that He is calling us to do.

Beholding and becoming

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.(2 Cor 3:18)

As we behold Jesus, as we look at God, and wait in that place where our whole attention is fixed upon Him, we become like that which we behold. We know that the kingdom of God is as close to us as the hand in front of our face; we can turn into it at any time, we can behold what is in God’s kingdom, and we can become the image of Jesus. Or, we can look at what is around us, fix our eyes on our problems and difficulties, and become more like them.

It is a choice: what are we going to look at?

If we look into a mirror, we see a reflection of ourself. But this scripture says we can see the glory of the Lord. God wants us to see ourselves as He sees us, to see ourselves through His eyes, to see ourselves the way He created us to be: full of His presence and His glory.

As we focus on Him, and see ourselves as we are supposed to be, He changes us a little at a time, so that we become more like Him. So when we actually look into a mirror, we start to see what we are like in the kingdom of God.

Now when the enemy looks at us, depending how far along this transformation we have come in relationship with God, he sees the light that is in us, and it challenges the darkness he seeks to bring. What he might see is described in Revelation chapter 1: fire in our eyes and a flaming sword coming out of our mouth – this is the likeness of Jesus into which we are being transformed. As yet, perhaps he only sees a flickering candle, but the more we focus on God, the more we wait in His presence, the more we learn to behold Him, the more that light begins to shine on the inside of us, and the more visible it becomes on the outside too.

Fix our eyes on Jesus

Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith (Heb 12:2).

As we do that, He is the One who will start to change us. Our part is to fix our eyes on Him, and not be distracted; to behold Him so that we can become like Him.

If we focus on the problems, the problems always look bigger, until all we can see is the problem, and we cannot see a way out. But if we focus on the solution (which is always God), the problems look smaller, until all we can see is the solution, and we change.

For nothing will be impossible with God (Luke 1:37)

There is no situation, nothing which has happened to us in the past, nothing right now, and nothing in our future, that He cannot change if we look to Him. There is nothing He cannot transform. Nothing is impossible. There is nothing we cannot overcome; there is nothing that can stop us fulfilling our destiny, if we allow Him to strengthen us. He will make us strong, as we look to Him.

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me (Phil 4:13).

I encourage you to spend some time today (and every day), building your spirit up by just waiting in the presence of God, and looking at Him.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

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If our free or paid resources are a blessing to you, please consider sowing into and supporting this ministry with a financial gift. Thank you!

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142. Present A Living Sacrifice (2)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect
 (Romans 12:1-2).

Transformation is complete, thorough, radical change. It enables us to prove (to find out and be sure of) what is the perfect will of God for us (that is, what is our destiny), and then to outwork it.

Present ourselves daily

But it involves sacrifice.

Worship is surrender. Worship is obedience. So we come to Jesus, our High Priest, and we present ourselves at the altar as a living sacrifice. This is something we are to do every day. We present ourselves to God so that He can use us, He can transform us, He can change us. It is not the sacrifice who is responsible for the changing. We do not have to transform ourselves: we merely have to present ourselves and God will do the changing.

So by faith we enter the Holy Place, in the heavenly tabernacle, in the heavenly realms. There is an altar there. Not the bronze altar where Israel used to offer sacrifices: Jesus was offered on that altar once and for all. We come instead to the altar of incense. When we give ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, the fragrance of our submitted lives goes up before Him, and He loves it.

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus… (Heb 10:19).

Because of Jesus’ sacrifice and death, we can come right into the Holy Place. We do not come on our own merit, we come by the blood of Jesus. The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:17).

Jesus is our High Priest, and He prepares the sacrifice that we give Him: our life. We have to present ourselves to Him and allow Him to deal with us. So we come by faith to surrender. We have looked before at the details of how the sacrificial lamb was prepared for sacrifice. It is really helpful for us to understand how those steps apply to us. If you are not familiar with this, please do take the time to read about it before moving on.

Click this link to read our earlier post (opens in a new window or tab): Present A Living Sacrifice (1).

Preparing the sacrifice

It is a picture of what we need to have done to us. The priest slit its throat, drained its blood, chopped off its head, skinned it, split it open, right down to the marrow of the backbone. Everything was opened up before God. All the inner organs were washed and  the legs cut off. Then the pieces were put on the altar.

We have to surrender our lives to Him, fully, for Him to do what He needs to do. Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it” (Luke 9:23-24). We surrender our life to God, and exchange His life for ours. That is the meaning of sacrifice.

Dead, but alive

Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
(Rom 6:11-13).

If the flesh has to die, how is it a living sacrifice? It is because the flesh dies, but we carry on living in the spirit. Then our flesh does not get in the way, and the members of our body can be presented as instruments of righteousness, so that God can use us for His kingdom purposes. ‘Not my will, but Yours be done’, as Jesus said.

For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart (Heb 4:12 AMP).

We are allowing God to open us up and reveal the deepest parts of our nature, to cleanse us, to purify us, and restore us; to expose, sift, analyse, and judge the very thoughts and purposes of our heart. And because he loves us, He will change us from the inside out, so that we are more like Him.

‘In like manner’

In our daily walk we are surrendered and obedient to what God wants to do in us. We walk by faith and not by sight; according to His will and not ours, only doing what we see the Father doing. And the Father in us is able to do all His works through us. That is how Jesus lived every day, and He wants us to live every day that way too.

We cannot do it in our own strength. We cannot do it by the flesh. We can only do it in the spirit. We have to surrender.

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner” (John 5:19). If Jesus could do nothing of Himself, how much less can we?

Faith of the Son of God

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20 KJV).

When Jesus was on the cross, bearing our sin, we were crucified with Him. He is living in me, and that life is lived by faith of the Son of God (I have purposely quoted a translation that says ‘of’: it is not even my faith that I live by, but His). Jesus surrendered His life so that we could have full, abundant life. I want to encourage you, every day to present yourself as a living sacrifice before God. Surrender, and allow Him to prepare you, to change you, to transform you from the inside out, to deal with your soul so that your spirit can flow in the life of God.

We are going to pray, and I want to encourage you to be willing to daily deny yourself and allow the Spirit and the life of God to flow through you, out from you, and to change you.

Every day, present yourself. I do, every day; so that every day, God can use me.

Father, I thank You that You sent Jesus
to die on the cross for me
to take my sin, my sickness,
and everything about my flesh,
and to die in my place.

I choose to surrender myself as a living sacrifice to You,
and allow You to prepare my life
for the life of Jesus to flow from me.

Prepare my life as I surrender,
so that everything that has come through nature
can be transformed
everything that has come through nurture
can be transformed,
everything that has come through trauma
can be transformed,
so that I live a life flowing in the Spirit and in the power of God
bringing the kingdom of God from heaven to earth,
living as a manifestation of Your presence here on earth,
that Your light would shine through me.

I open up my life in surrender to You.
so that You can do Your work through me
and that I might bring glory to You.

Jesus, as You gave Your life for me,
I choose to give my life to You, daily,
as a living sacrifice,
in order to fulfil my destiny
and the purposes of God, here and now in this time,
so that in eternity I will be able to fulfil all You have for me to do there.

Father, I praise You,
Father, I bless You,
In Jesus’ Name

.Amen.

Related articles

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138. Own it, Repent of it, Renounce it

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

Each of us has a destiny, a plan and a purpose God always intended us to fulfil. In preparing for that destiny, we have a choice, whether we want to go through this process and allow God to change us. Today I want to look a little more at our soul gates.

Conscience

Our conscience gets dulled because of sin and rebellion, and therefore if we have operating in our lives any weaknesses, patterns of sin, ‘normal, acceptable behaviours’ (which are neither normal nor acceptable to God because He sees the damage they do to us), we have to be willing to own them.

We cannot argue with God in this process. If we do, we will lose the argument and it will be much harder to be transformed. I have learnt to confess it, own it, repent of it and renounce it. Repentance has nothing to do with feeling sorry, or with doing penance! The Greek word metanoia really means ‘having the same mind as God’, so to ‘repent’ is to change your mind and think about something the way God thinks about it.

If God shows me something, He is always right about it: I am not going to deny it. He knows what is there. I do have sin areas, weak areas in my life. And God showed me patterns of sin when I went through this process that I had to own and say ‘yes, I have acted like that’. And I did not realise it, until God showed me, until I opened up my heart and asked God to show me what goes on inside me.

In doing that, I was able to repent (in the true sense), renounce, and my conscience became really sharp. I applied the blood of Jesus to it. I received forgiveness and cleansing. I refused to feel guilt, shame and condemnation (which are things the enemy brings). Every one of us needs to know that we are righteous. That is part of ‘having the same mind as God’ – He has made me righteous, and He calls me righteous! Then reverence can flow through that conscience gate and guide me and direct me in everything I do every day. But if that conscience gate is damaged, or blocked, affected by sin, it will lead me astray. I need to have it transformed.

Reason

Rationalism, scepticism, cynicism, denial, projection: our mind will fool us into putting the blame on somebody else, and not dealing with what is on the inside of us. We might have words, ideas, philosophies and doctrines in us that need changing, familiar spirits or religious spirits operating in us, behaviour cycles that we recognise. Just own it. Do not argue, give up. Surrender. Stop fighting for the flesh, and surrender to the spirit. As we do, we apply the truth of the word which God speaks to us. The mind of Christ will start flowing through us: the thoughts of God flowing through us; revelation and faith flowing through us.

Imagination

Every one of us has seen a great many negative images in our lifetime. We have to deal with them. Otherwise the enemy will bring them back and use them to pollute our imagination. We want to be able to see revelation, images, and visitations, both in the heavenly realms and in this one; we may be hindered from doing so if our imagination is polluted.

TV, films, games, magazines, books, fantasies – even life itself:  we are going to need to get rid of whatever we have seen that is negative. Again, I owned everything I saw as sin. I repented and renounced it and I painted it out with the blood of Jesus.

I now no longer have any of those images in my memory. They are completely gone. It is like having a filing cabinet in my mind that has folders in it. Each one has an index tab with something written on it; but when you look inside the folder, there is nothing in it. I can remember the things that have happened in my life but I can no longer remember the details of them or recall the images of them because they have gone. They have been cleansed: all those images are completely wiped out of my memory.

So if you have images that you are plagued with, put them under the blood of Jesus and paint them out so that they are no longer there. We can have a purified memory and a cleansed screen, so that we are able to see visions and have dreams, and experience revelation from God flowing.

We will have the eyes of our heart opened and enlightened: a flow of hope, and a flow of revelation: visions, dreams, visitations in the heavenly realms, all because our imagination is now clean. We can be cleansed. But we need to actually allow God to do it.

Subconscious Mind

It is the same thing with our subconscious mind. All the memories, words, vows, curses: every trigger that I experienced in my life, every defence mechanism, every coping mechanism. I owned it, repented of it (changed my mind about it) and renounced it. As we apply the blood of Jesus, that soil of our heart will be dealt with. The hardness will be dealt with; the stones, and the weeds. We will just get a flow of revelation knowledge from God; it will flow through our subconscious and trigger the right things, and we will be moved by the things that move God.

Emotions

Our emotions are affected by all the trauma, all the hurts, all the betrayal, all the abuse: disappointment, pain, and rejection we have felt and experienced. And we have to admit we have hurt other people as well as being hurt by them. If you are feeling anger or withdrawal or depression, all those things arise from emotions that we have not dealt with. We either turn in or we turn out.

We need to own all those mechanisms: we need to repent, forgive and release all the hurt, repent of everything we have done to hurt others, and renounce it all. Then we are going to start to get a flow of God’s heart, of intuition, of being moved by what moves God.

Will

If you are stubborn and if you have been rebellious, willful, or controlling you have to own it. Fear, doubt, unbelief, indecision: if they are operating in your life, own it, repent and renounce it, and in that process apply the truth of the blood of Jesus, and God will begin to work things in you, positive things: patience, boldness, courage, perseverance. You will begin to get into a flow of worship, a flow of obedience, in which we are outworking the truth of God’s word day by day.

I know this is a lot to take on board all at once. I am putting it all out there and I am just encouraging you to use the gateways diagram (or spinner) to begin to deal with whatever of this is in your life. Ask Jesus to come and stand in the gateways with you, and show you what he sees. It may not be a quick process, but with a bit of application you can do it.

Own it, repent of it, renounce it. All it takes is surrender, and allowing God to deal with it.

Related articles from Freedom ARC
Related resource from Freedom ARC

RELEASING TOXIC EMOTIONS

Seminar with Kari Browning

Get the recordings here!

We were delighted to host internationally renowned speaker Kari Browning, teaching on this topic for the first time in the UK.

Toxic emotions are often the source of emotional pain, relational difficulties, and physical illness. By releasing toxic emotions you will come into a place of rest for your soul and health for your body.

The technique Kari uses to release toxic emotions involves prayer, the laying on of hands, and the use of therapeutic-grade essential oils.

These recordings from Kari’s seminar here at the Freedom Centre in August 2018  include downloadable video and audio versions together with PDF files of her presentations. The cost is £36.17 GBP (inc VAT). Available at https://freedomarc.org/kari

This blog post was the last day of our participation in #NaBloPoMo – a post every day for the month of November 2013

Support Freedom ARC

If our free or paid resources are a blessing to you, please consider sowing into and supporting this ministry with a financial gift. Thank you!

Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

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paintedout

137. Our Need For God

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:24-25).

Sin

Sin, and all the ‘sins’ we commit, are an indicator of our need for God.

The original ‘sin’ came about through losing sight of our true identity (that is what Adam and Eve did in the garden); individual ‘sins’ are things we do to make us feel better about ourselves because we fail to see ourselves as He sees us. Those who struggle with lust, it is because they desperately desire intimacy: God is the best there is if we are looking for intimacy and love.

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me (Galatians 2:20-21).

Am I willing to love God in return, and give myself up for Him? For Him to change me, transform me and conform me to His image, so that I become more and more like Jesus here on the earth?

I did this as a crash course and worked through every year of my life, to deal with every blockage in every area of my soul, and I did it in three weeks. Now, I had three weeks I could set aside to do this, and I know not everyone can do that, but I am encouraging you to make a choice today to start working through the things that have accumulated in your life and to allow God to change you.

Emotional damage

The First Love gate is the key. All of us have emotional damage through relationships, spouse, parents, family, friends, or authority figures. That damage causes us to lack trust, and to put barriers up to protect ourselves. When we want to let God in, those barriers get in the way. We are often afraid to ‘let go and let God’ come and be in control. We have to deal with those things.

Unmet needs will affect my soul’s desires and motives. Unhealed hurt will affect my emotional desires and motives. Unresolved issues in our lives will affect our trust. We have to surrender and allow God to do what only He can do. And if we have problems, we need to work through them: forgive people who have let us down and disappointed us, repent of and renounce the things we have done to meet our own needs and protect ourselves.

God will meet our needs

All of us need acceptance, love, affection, value and worth; approval, significance, affirmation, identity and purpose; security and safety. They are all needs that God has built into us: they are all needs that He wants to meet in us Himself. He does not want us to try to meet those needs through the flesh,  but all of us have tried exactly that. As a result, all of us have been damaged, and all of us need to be transformed and find God’s love.

I worked through these areas: my conscience, my imagination, reason, subconscious mind, emotions, choice and will. I worked through each one, to deal with the things that were blockages and stopping God flowing through me and working through my life. Is that really complicated and difficult? No, it is a choice. Do I really want God’s presence and His power? Do I really want to be manifesting the kingdom of heaven on earth? Or am I content to carry on living the way I have always lived?

God will do it: the choice is mine.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Note: This post has been around for a while. More recently Mike has had even more startling revelation about sin…
https://www.facebook.com/freedomarc.uk/videos/1612916992092902

Image attribution: Background image of a hand reaching up through the clouds by ds9hselee from Pixabay

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135. Aligning Gates

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott

We have seen that God is on the inside of us, and that we want to allow Him to flood our whole being with glory so that we overflow to transform the world around us.

Yesterday we looked at each of the gateways in our spirit through which He wants to flow. Tomorrow we will look at those in our soul, but today’s post is a little unusual…

One of the things we have found really useful here in Freedom Church is to make a rotating cardboard cutout of the ‘gateways’ diagram shared with us by Ian Clayton. Then we can line up different combinations of gates and ask Jesus to stand with us in them and show us how the river of life should flow through that particular combination.

To make one, you need to print off four copies of the gateways diagram – or click here for one with the cutting circles already drawn on – onto thin card (you can print it on paper and stick it to card if that is simpler). Then cut them out as in the diagram below, so that you have four different sized circles.

Make a small hole in the centre of all four circles. Finally, fasten them together in order, face up, with the smallest on top and the largest on the bottom, using a split-pin type paperclip pushed through from the top. You might want to put some sticky tape over the ends of the splayed pin because they can be quite sharp.

There is an image of the completed spinner in the header image of this post (and below). You will see that the first love, hope, mind, and ear gates are aligned from the centre. Spin each wheel separately to line up any combination of gates as a visual prompt as you work through them.

gates wheel perspective

Related articles from Freedom ARC

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133. From The Inside Out

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

I have written before about how God gave me four words: investiture, succession, enthronement and coronation. Those four events happen in that exact order. First you are invested with authority, but you do not immediately move on to taking up your throne. Before you can be enthroned, succession has to happen: that is, whoever or whatever is presently sitting on that throne needs to die, step aside or be removed.

If we are invested with the power of the kingdom, then we have to dethrone the things that are ruling in our lives: our self, our soul; me, myself, and I. If I want to see the kingdom of God flowing through my life there is no place on the throne for ‘me, myself and I’. ‘I’ will only get in the way of it. ‘I’ will spoil it, ‘I’ will block it. ‘I’ need to be dethroned.

Nature, which has programmed me, programmed my DNA from past generations, needs to be restored and renewed. Nurture, environmental programming in my life: my upbringing, what has gone on around me, needs to be restored and renewed. Trauma, which is experiential programming, things I have experienced that cause me to respond in particular ways, needs reprogramming. I need to be transformed, restored to my original eternal condition. That is what God wants to happen here, in this realm; not just in eternity, because what happens here will determine what I do in eternity once time is finished.

This is a picture which describes how we can start operating in the kingdom of God (Ian Clayton saw something similar to this on a scroll he received from heaven, though the origins of the diagram go back to at least the year 1919).

It starts with the glory of God, His presence on the inside of us. In our spirit, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have come to make their home as Jesus promised. They want to occupy the seat of government in our lives. As we open that inner door of first love, the glory of God first flows out into our spirit and develops our spiritual senses. Then it flows out through our soul and transforms our soul. God comes into our heart, where our scroll of destiny is seated, and begins to transform us. Eventually His glory flows out through our body, a manifestation of transfiguration, where the light of God’s glory will shine through us.

Notice how the flow is always from the inside. Everything in the kingdom happens from the inside out. It is no good us trying change ourselves from the outside in. We need to learn to surrender ourselves to the presence of God on the inside, so that the presence of God flows through our whole being, and transforms us.

We begin by opening the First Love gate. That is where Jesus is knocking in Revelation 3:20.  He wants us to enjoy intimacy with Him, and He wants access to the whole of our lives, spirit, soul and body. The door handle is on our side.

Here is an animated version of that diagram, created by Adam Butterick for Son Of Thunder (click the ‘play’ button to start):

We will look some more at this diagram over the next few posts. There are gateways between each of these parts of our lives, and they have been blocked, often by things that have come in from the outside.

The things we have seen, smelt, heard, tasted and touched will have affected our soul. If we try to change them by the things we can see, smell, hear, taste and touch on the outside, it will not be effective because all we do is reinforce the operations of the self.

But if we allow the Spirit of God to flow through us, we allow His presence to change and transform us – from the inside.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC

Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

Or you can use the blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you! *Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation. For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead. 

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

We developed this just for you:

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

132. Broken Cisterns Hold No Water

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Everything we are writing about in this series on Preparing For Destiny comes down to (or builds up to) one thing: what will we choose to do? Will we choose to do what Jesus would do? Or will we choose to do what our own flesh tells us to do?

Holy Spirit flow

If we are to choose right, we need to be flowing in the Holy Spirit.

We need a connection with the Holy Spirit. We need to be baptised in the Holy Spirit. We need to be speaking in tongues. Praying in tongues is a major flow of the life of God which is within us. It builds up an environment around us which draws the presence of God, so that God comes and fills that space.

Dead to God

This is what we were like before we came into the realisation of being born again:

We had a soul. Our heart had natural needs, we had a body of flesh through which it did its best to meet its natural needs, and we had a spirit that was dead to God, separated from Him in our own understanding. That is why we read in Jeremiah:

For My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me
The fountain of living waters,
To hew for themselves cisterns,
Broken cisterns
That can hold no water.
(Jer 2:13).

diagram: Dead to God

Believing itself separated from God, our soul had no alternative but to try to get its needs met however it could. So it tried to meet those needs by drawing on the world. We all have a built-in need for love, acceptance, security, significance and purpose. But the world cannot fully meet those needs (it was never intended to) and as a result, our soul is damaged and we experience hurt, pain, rejection, insecurity, fear, disappointment, guilt, and shame.

Alive to God

Then we hear and respond to the gospel. Our spirit now comes alive to God, and suddenly we realise it is possible for us to have our needs met by Him. But we are used to getting them met by the world. So we have to transfer our source of acceptance and love; we need to transfer it from the world around us, to God, who is on the inside of us.

We start to look inwards, to God in us; not outwards, to the world.

As we do that, as we are transformed, as we are restored in our soul, then God deals with that damage. We do not need to look to the world to meet our needs. We look to Him. And we can then start to manifest through our body the life that flows from the spirit. You have seen Christians who positively glow with the life of God within them. More than that, we can be literally transfigured.

Spirit senses, soul senses

Diagram: Alive to God

Here is another way of looking at this: we are born again, in our spirit we have the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the glory of God in us, and we have nine spiritual senses that begin to develop through practice (we will look more at those another time). We know God’s love, we have access to the heavenly realms, and can enjoy real intimacy with Him, which enables that love to be outworked in our lives. Then our soul senses develop too, and eventually we start to manifest around us the glory of God: deliverance, the works of Jesus, miracles, supernatural works, healing, greater works (John 14:12), signs and wonders: all start to flow out through our lives. Or that is what should happen.

Blockages

But there are blockages. There is a blockage between our spirit and the heavenly realms, because probably no-one ever taught us we could go there (in fact mostly they taught us that we could not, at least until we die). There is a blockage between our soul and our spirit, because our soul is used to being in control. There is a blockage between our soul and our body, preventing the flow of life streaming out from us to the world.

But as we are transformed, these blockages are removed. Our spirit and soul start to work together. We begin to feel God’s love, as well as to just know God’s love for us. We learn to access the heavenly realms, so we can express God’s love and manifest God’s kingdom in and through our lives to the world around us. We are changed, transformed, transfigured.

And this last diagram sums it all up.

Diagram; Connected

With the new birth, the DNA of God is in our spirit: we have access to the fountain of life; we have access to our destiny; we are a dwelling-place of God, through relationship. Our spirit now needs to produce the fruit and the gifts. The river of life flows through the garden of our soul, so that our whole life is manifesting God’s glory. We have access to the kingdom of God within us, and the kingdom of God in the heavenly realms, and as we learn to operate there our life is transformed.

Practice

As we have said before, the key to this is practice. You have to practise to train your senses. You have to practise how you transform your soul.

But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. (Heb 5:14)

We have to train our spiritual senses; we have to train our soul senses, to be connected up with the kingdom of God in heaven to outwork on earth.

So we are going to do that, over the coming weeks on this blog. We are going to help you train your spirit senses, train your soul senses, and we are going to see transformation taking place.

You have been invested with authority, but you have to come into that place of succession so that you can be enthroned. To bring God’s kingdom from heaven to earth, you have to dethrone the soul. Now that is not an easy process, but you can do it.

With God and our spirit working together, we can all do it.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC


Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button
Or you can use this blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*.
Thank you!
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For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.

Featured image attribution: “Nabatean Well Negev 031812” by Mark A. Wilson (Wilson44691) – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://goo.gl/ycuom2

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

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Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

131. Thoughts and Intentions of the Heart

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

The Heart

The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
(Jer 17:9)

That is why our heart needs to be transformed.

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.
(Prov 23:7).

The way our heart thinks will determine how we live and how we are. We cannot be content to allow our nature (the record of our past generations) to programme our heart, nor nurture (the events which have gone on around us and shaped our history), nor trauma (things which have happened to us and conditioned us to respond in particular ways). Our heart must be programmed by our spirit and by the Word of God.

For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart (Matt 12:34).

We are called to be speaking spirits, to have authority to call things into being, so it is really important that our hearts are pure and that what comes out of our heart is a flow of the life of God.

Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.
(Prov 4:23)

Life comes from within our heart, as it is fed from the river of Life with the Spirit. But not if it is fed instead from the world around us.

When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart (Matt 13:19).

We have to be really careful about the state and condition of our hearts. In the parable of the sower, Jesus is talking of the soil of our heart, its condition, and the things that are sown there. There were stones, weeds, all sorts, but it was the good soil which produced an abundance of fruit.

A tree of life

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life (Prov 13:12).

Because we have not fulfilled our eternal destiny, there are disappointments in our lives which bring sickness to our heart. God wants to restore and heal it. Instead, let us draw from the tree of life, as it says in the second half of this verse. The tree of life is in the Garden of God as it always was, and we can access it today if our hearts are right.

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb 4:12).

Our heart has thoughts and intentions. We need to be aware of what is motivating us. We can choose to be motivated only as Jesus was, by the things He saw the Father doing. We will learn how to do that.

12 laws

I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people (Jer 31:33).

The ‘law’ here is not the Ten Commandments. but the laws which are the principles of the kingdom. Someone asked the other day what they are, because I have mentioned them before. They are:

Law of the Spirit of Life
Law of Sin and Death
Law of Love
Law of Faith
Law of Sowing and Reaping
Law of First Mention
Law of First Born
Law of Abundance
Law of Justice
Law of Righteousness
Law of Judgment
Law of Grace

Delight and desire

Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart (Psalm 37:4).

If I delight in Him, the desires of my heart will then be the desires that God has for me, which are written on my scroll. I do not want my heart’s desires to be those that have shaped me or come from my past generations or from the experiences of life, I want them to come from the scroll of destiny that is in my heart. I need my heart transformed and changed, so that His desires become my desires.

In the intimacy of relationship that I can have and enjoy with God, He restores my soul. He restores my heart, and brings it back into its original intended purpose. He guides me in the things that He has written about me that I am to outwork; He leads me according to those paths. I have to stay close to God, engage with Him, and allow Him to restore my soul.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake
(Psalm 23:1-3).

Related articles from Freedom ARC
  • The Seat of Government
  • Flesh vs Spirit
  • The Heart, the Blood and the Brain
  • The Proof Of Desire

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130. The Seat of Government

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Within us

The kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21).

If the kingdom is within us, what else is?

Our own spirit.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The kingdom of God – the seat of God’s government of heaven
Our heart – our subconscious mind
The garden in our heart, in which we can engage God.
Rivers that flow from heaven, flowing through our spirit, our garden, and out to the world.
Our scroll of destiny, in our heart.

That is quite a list of what is in us, things we have to learn to engage with, and we have to understand how they all function in us, so that we can work with them.

Here is an outline image of a body, showing all those things within us.

Within Us (diagram)

You can see our heart, and within our heart there is a scroll. Our heart is our subconscious mind.

There is a throne, the seat of God’s government within us.

Where is our spirit? I was talking to Ian Clayton, and God started to speak to me about it. Our spirit man lives in a membrane which goes over the brain and down our spinal column. That membrane is not connected to the blood. That is important because our blood supply carries the record of our DNA and past generations, and it needs to be purified, cleansed and changed. So our spirit is not connected directly to our blood supply. It is connected through our heart.

There is a door in our spirit, that Jesus spoke about in Revelation 3:20. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are dwelling within our spirit, and we have to let them out. God will not force Himself upon us. We have to open that door and let Him out, every day, into our spirit. Our spirit is within us and is connected to the seat of government in our lives.

The seat of government

When we are first developing in our relationship with God and we invite Him to come in and fill us, He occupies the seat of government in our lives. Then as we grow and mature, He gives us more and more access to that seat of government. The kingdom of heaven is both within us and in the heavenly realms, so we are also seated there in authority: we are seated with Him in the heavenly places.

He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.
(1 Cor 6:17)

The more we are surrendered, and the more we become transformed into His image, the more we experience the reality of becoming one spirit with Him. We start to rule together. That is what the kingdom is all about: ruling together.

That seat is within us and as we open up the door, God comes and sits on that seat.
Then we can invite Him to come into our heart. That is a phrase people often use when praying a prayer of salvation, but what does it mean? If He comes into our heart, He comes to change us and transform us.

The DNA of God

He comes into our heart, and starts to reprogramme our heart, and the blood that is in our heart, with the DNA of God. That is why we take communion, to be reprogrammed with the DNA of God, to be transformed by the life of God in us. Then that transformation spreads out from our heart, carried by our blood to our brain, where it transforms our thinking, and renews our mind.

Blood circulates. It goes around our body, and back again to our heart. In our natural bodies it goes to our lungs and picks up breath, oxygen. So in the spiritual sense our heart needs to draw life from our spirit, send it around the body to transform our life then go back to the spirit for more. That is what the heart does.

As we sit in the seat of government and rule together with God, the kingdom of heaven comes to manifest around us. Rivers of living water and anointing and power start to flow out through us. We learn to walk in His ways, keep His laws, and rule.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

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